Author: Alan Buddug

Yesterday, NPR reported that humans produced more CO2 from industrial processes in 2020 than any other year in history despite the pandemic and all our ongoing strategies to reduce emissions. This shouldn’t be surprising because capitalism requires continued economic growth, renewable energy has been used to facilitate that growth rather than to reduce absolute CO2 emissions, and the groups and governments in control of the world would rather end humanity than experience the inconvenience of substantive change.

Related: Greenhouse emissions reached record levels in 2020, even with pandemic lockdowns by Scott Neuman, NPR

In another story, George Monbiot points out that the transformation of society in a matter of months (rather than years or decades) has been done before — which is to say, we now must transform our entire society in months because that’s all we have left. The opportunity to do it in years has passed, as has the opportunity to do it in decades. Making that kind of change in months would be really inconvenient. In essence, the cost of doing something substantive about climate change keeps increasing in terms of inconvenience, and for a society that would rather die than be inconvenienced, that doesn’t mean action. If inconvenience is unthinkable, and death is the only other option, then death is what’s going to happen.

The position of the left is and has always been that we can do the right thing right now. This is a true fact. Every day that we don’t do the right thing is a day that we chose to do the wrong thing. It isn’t hard to do the right thing — people just don’t want to. What’s a good word for a person who knows what the right thing is but just chooses not to do it because it isn’t convenient?

In the so-called Fertile Crescent, climate change is driving people away because there simply isn’t enough water anymore. These changes have happened within the lifetimes of many of the people currently living there. Today, that land that was once the birthplace of civilization is becoming uninhabitable, but over the next 50 to 100 years, everyone in the continental US will be facing the exact same thing — staring out into a wasteland, trying to figure out how to survive. The answer to that question will depend a lot on what we do now; if we don’t act now, there won’t be any survival.

When climate experts try to inform us, they typically talk about the worst-case scenarios as something that, “could happen if we don’t act.” That, to me, is a big mistake because it implies that we are going to do the right thing. We haven’t done that for 40 years, and we’re not going to do it today. The more accurate message would be that the end of humanity is definitely what is going to happen and only extreme change will save it at this point. Even with drastic change, our children and grandchildren are going to suffer. What we have left is to do the right thing so they can survive and so that someday our great-grandchildren can live in a better world.

Yesterday’s Heather Cox Richardson essay focuses quite a bit on Facebook and how its algorithms sent conservatives straight into the arms of QAnon. It’s technically true, in the same way that the “Russian interference” narrative was also technically true. These are both narratives that are extremely popular among liberals, and the point seems to be to take the blame off of conservatives by painting them as victims of a sinister, obscured force. Liberals need this narrative because they are conservatives; they are conserving the status quo of capitalism. They want to preserve this system with billionaires having power over the rest of us while we only have rights — rights that can be worked around by the people in power.

The truth of conservativism, though, is that it always tends toward fascism unless you actively stop it. It’s not enough to broadly criticize the Russian government or Facebook for its participation because criticizing them isn’t the same as stopping them. If we are criticizing fascism and not preventing it, we are tolerating fascism — and that brings us back to the Paradox of Tolerance. In essence, the Paradox of Tolerance states that unlimited tolerance of intolerance leads to a fascist society wherein intolerance rules. This is exactly what happened in the Weimar Republic (pre-Nazi Germany) and what is happening here in the US. Fascists love an environment of tolerance and will actively pretend to favor tolerance, quite often lamenting how the other side is being mean to them.

Has the German policy of intolerance toward fascism worked? There is some indication that it might have at least helped. Twitter studied algorithmic amplification in 7 countries and found that, “Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left when studied as a group” — but this effect did not occur in Germany. Of the 7 countries, Britain was the worst; so at least the US wasn’t the worst.

While Facebook algorithms did become unwitting participants in fascism and the Russian government did purposefully nudge the US toward the chaos of Trump-style fascism, this shift from conservativism to fascism is natural and some other vehicle would have transported conservatives there had it not been for Facebook or Russia. They are quite literally desperate to travel down that road. The entire reason fascism happens is because a privileged group is desperate to maintain their privileged status — and willing to do anything to maintain it. A privileged group is effectively the same as a conservative group; the only thing conservatives want to conserve is their privilege.

Liberals are also conservatives — albeit, conserving a different system from the one far right conservatives want to conserve. The far right is looking to conserve an older, more traditional form of society whereas liberals are just looking to conserve this current capitalist system. I think we’re all familiar with the privileges that right wing conservatives are conserving, but what privileges are liberals conserving?

If you consider the ways in which life in the US is better than life in other places, you’ll find that the good conditions here are created by destruction elsewhere. Similarly, the good conditions in our upper middle class suburbs are balanced out with destruction in other areas of our own country. Trump used middle class anxiety about these geographical disparities when he spoke about danger to suburban neighborhoods in the context of immigration policy, but interestingly, liberals do not want more open borders and are quite happy to provide the police with an ever-increasing budget. Similarly, liberals do not favor a rational response to climate science because it would affect their lifestyle — they are willing to preserve their current lifestyle at the expense of the future of the human species. Liberals are conservatives, and the only thing conservatives want to conserve is their privilege.

This all adds up to liberals being unwilling to be anti-fascist. They want to tolerate fascism — not for the sake of tolerance, but rather to provide a balance that prevents change and conserves their privilege. That won’t work, though, because fascism is coming for them, too.

By now you’ve probably heard that Alec Baldwin accidentally killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza with a gun on the set of a film. I can’t help but recall a similar failure that resulted in the death of Brandon Lee on the set of the Crow in 1993, but there is an important distinction. In the case of Lee’s death, the scene called for the gun to be pointed at his character; while I would encourage anyone shooting a movie to use forced perspective or CGI to avoid actually pointing a gun at a person, the scene did call for that. In contrast, there should never be a reason for a gun to be pointed at a cinematographer or a director. That’s the most shocking part of this story for me.

So now, it’s my duty to point out that if they had just followed the rules of gun safety, Halyna Hutchins would still be with us and Joel Souza would not have been horribly injured. Anyone who is handling a real gun, a realistic prop gun, or even a gun-like device (e.g., a bottle of glass cleaner, or a drill) needs to be aware of these rules and follow them at all times.

Here’s the short version of those rules:

1. All guns are always loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
4. Identify your target and what is behind it
5. Be aware of your mental state and do not touch a gun if you are compromised.

A longer version is available here. I mention gun-like devices because we exist in a context where there are guns and you don’t want to accidentally shoot someone the first time you pick up a real gun because you’ve developed a habit of resting your index finger on the trigger of your plant mister. Your finger is your best and sometimes only safety device on a firearm. Conversely, no mechanical or manual safety will save you from a negligent discharge if your safety finger somehow isn’t working right.

How many of the rules of gun safety did Alec Baldwin fail to obey? Definitely the first four. Why did he not receive adequate training before handling a firearm? Were the victims of his negligent discharge also negligent?

We can certainly argue about whether guns are a good thing, and whether this hyper-violent culture we live in is a good thing; along with that, we could talk about why Hollywood keeps making firearm-centered movies despite being overwhelmingly anti-gun (which creates a dangerous atmosphere that occasionally kills someone). However, I think we all need to admit the reality of the world that we’re living in and embrace firearm safety training regardless of whether or not we plan to ever actually fire a gun.

Certainly, people working on films with firearms need this training. Here is a related Twitter thread from @t_NYC which indicates that most actors are not receiving adequate firearms training before someone hands them a gun. In fact, it makes the situation sound much more dangerous than how I’ve portrayed it.

The science of climate change is clear: We need to act immediately to avoid the worst consequences, and those consequences will now include the end of human life on this planet if we continue to fail to act. Since we won’t have a viable way to create independent colonies on other planets until long after those worst consequences have happened, the end of life on this planet means the end of all human life.

Unfortunately, the world is being run by dangerous extremists who are using renewable energy as a means of continuing economic growth instead of using renewables to replace fossil fuels. By “dangerous extremists,” I of course mean the Democratic Party. Oh, you thought I meant Republicans and other fascists? No — although conservatives are fighting against losing their grip on power in this world, they are still losing their grip, and our recent forays into fascism are indicative of the desperation that comes with conservativism when they are losing. And, yes, this is a global problem; however, the US still leads the way globally, and those other politicians in other countries who are making the same bad decisions are very much cut from the same cloth as Democrats in the US. That would be the cloth of neoliberalism and capitalist globalism.

They are extreme because their fanatical devotion to the cult of neoliberalism will literally kill us all if they aren’t stopped. They are dangerous because killing us all would be pretty much the most danger humanity can be in. (This should be clear, but I felt like I had to spell it out.) Calling them dangerous extremists is completely reasonable and accurate. Yes, I do realize that these horrific consequences are a long way off, but our actions today take about 30 years to manifest as a deadly climate. The problems we are seeing now are just a warmup, so to speak. A rational, compassionate government would be willing to sacrifice everything else to protect the existence of human life, so blaming this on the Republicans isn’t really going to work.

Why did Democratic Party voters vote for such a dangerous extremist? They had another candidate to choose in the primary who was not a dangerous extremist. I mean, sure, he wasn’t really a good candidate, but he was really the only reasonable choice — then they voted for the dangerous extremist anyway. They said that Joe Biden was the practical choice; then we learned they were lying — they really just liked Joe Biden. The logical conclusion is that those voters are also dangerous extremists who are willing to sacrifice all human life in the future for their comfort today. They’re like that asshole trying to make a left turn from the far right lane, except instead of risking a traffic collision, they’re gambling with literally all human life.

Biden’s popularity has dropped like a rock, but for all the wrong reasons. When the Biden administration re-opened oil and gas drilling leases because climate change “does not present sufficient cause” to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel production, it really didn’t affect his popularity. What’s really killing Joe’s popularity is the ongoing problems with international trade due to COVID-19. It isn’t that people are starving — no, the problem is that we just aren’t getting enough fun stuff shipped into the country to keep everyone entertained.

To be clear: We have enough food, but some flavors of Oreos are not currently available. We still have 1.8 cars per household in the US, but it is really hard to get a new one; you have to wait! You can’t get a 4000-core gaming video card at all these days! There’s a good chance you won’t be able to get your hands on a turkey for the holidays!

Oh, the outrage!

Related: Biden administration to resume drilling auctions in setback to climate agenda by Nichola Groom, Reuters

Speaking of holidays — Christmas might be ruined, I hear. Now, stop me if I’m wrong, but my recollection was that Christmas had something to do with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wasn’t that it? So why is it that we’re concerned that it might not be an orgy of consumerism this year? Was Jesus big into orgies of consumerism? I’m thumbing through my Bible right now. I’m not finding anything about that, but it is a pretty big book so maybe I’m just missing it.

Let’s talk about electric cars. Great idea, right? Well, yes, but again, the dangerous extremists are using the greener option of electric cars to continue growth of the automobile market. Most electricity is still generated with fossil fuels (60%; nuclear is an additional 20%) and renewables do produce some CO2 (during manufacturing), so even if most vehicles were electric (we are at less than 2% in the US), more cars would still mean more fossil fuel emissions. We have to get to negative net emissions by 2030, yet bad decisions like this continue to increase our overall production of CO2. The sane choice would be to replace existing vehicles with greener alternatives while simultaneously reducing the total number of vehicles on the roads.

Yes, that would be quite inconvenient. The cult of neoliberalism will not allow for any inconvenience, or any reduction in consumption. If these dangerous extremists have to choose between convenient consumption and death of the human species — well, get ready to die. Convenient consumption is a big part of the single most important political issue for most Americans: Not having unpleasant thoughts. It is why they chose Joe Biden and why the Democrats are going to lose relative to the Republicans in the next election.

Related: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

Missouri is in the news again. If you’re a Missourian, you know that phrase is never followed by anything good. At least we aren’t Florida, am I right?

This time, it is because Governor Mike Parson is threatening to prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist Josh Renaud because he looked at the source of a web page. This is something that happens all the time, and in fact, the web was built on this open-source approach on purpose — we are supposed to look at the source of HTML web pages. The original intent of the architects of the world wide web was that everyone should be able to see the mechanics of other people’s work to promote freedom of expression by allowing anyone to quickly learn how to build a web page.

In this case, the source of a Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website revealed over 100,000 teacher’s social security numbers. Woops. DESE has always been a bunch of baffoons — probably because a state that values ignorance so highly isn’t interested in adequately funding education — but this is a really impressive error. My guess is that they have a high school student who works for a middle manager taking care of the website rather than a professional programmer. They literally don’t understand that making a modern website with functionality requires a professional programmer because of their intense, willful ignorance and disdain for technical professionals.

The reporter had absolutely no obligation to report the problem to DESE before publishing his article, but that is exactly what he did. (Good on you, Josh Renard.) However, the governor is such a willfully ignorant sack of shit that he is threatening to have Renard prosecuted for hacking. Parson says that Renard had to take “multiple steps” to see the source of the HTML, and that is why it is hacking. If I need to check the engine compartment of my truck for mouse nests, I have to pull a lever, get out, move another lever, lift the hood, and set the hood support rod. That’s multiple steps. Am I “hacking” my pickup? But that misses the point that for most web browsers, there’s really only one step.

Conservatives are always complaining about snobby liberals insulting their intelligence, and it is true that I see a lot of unnecessarily vicious attacks by liberals on conservatives because of something the conservative didn’t know. However, all you conservatives need to stop and consider that if you don’t want to be mocked for your ignorance, you could stop and learn something first to prevent that from happening. When you’re about to talk — which seems to usually involve you suggesting that material harm should come to some individual or group — you should first stop and learn about the thing you’re angry about before you open your mouth. Just shut up for a minute, read something, and save yourself the embarrassment of being an idiot in public.

Although, it seems like a lot of you are failing to be embarrassed. I’d like to know if Governor Parson is embarrassed yet… or if he ever will be. Maybe his head is so far up his own ass that it will never happen. To their credit, there are some Missouri Republicans participating in criticizing the governor, like Tony Lovasco who said that it is, “clear the governor’s office has a fundamental misunderstanding of both web technology and industry-standard procedures for reporting security vulnerabilities,” adding that “journalists responsibly sounding an alarm on data privacy is not criminal hacking.”

Related: F12 isn’t hacking: Missouri governor threatens to prosecute local journalist for finding exposed state data by Carly Page, Tech Crunch

Today is Indigenous People’s Day, and it was nice to see that the Biden administration is acknowledging it as such. I can’t help to think, though, about the millions of Americans who are rabidly opposed to the repurposing of this holiday because they reject the essential facts regarding the European colonization of the ground we now call the United States of America. I’ve been trying for a very long time to understand their perspective — not necessarily so that I can sympathize with them, but just simply to make sense of it because it is clearly not sane.

There’s an ongoing debate within the left over whether conservative Americans are either ignorant but benign (so we should patiently educated them) or, conversely, informed and evil (so there’s no need for patience or education). I still don’t have a clear answer, but I’m leaning toward a sad combination of the two things — i.e., that they know next to nothing about anything factual, but are fanatically devoted to a relatively small collection of falsehoods. The reason for their devotion seems to stem almost entirely from an intense desire to believe that they’re better than everyone else (supremacist thinking), which I believe to be the essential core of evil.

How do you deal with people who aggressively reject reality just so they can feel superior to others? I don’t have an answer. I’m happy to see, though, that at least in this very small way — declaration of today as Indigenous People’s Day — the truth is making some headway. Going forward, we must continue to couple acknowledgement of the facts with good policy decisions that materially address those facts. In the case of Indigenous People’s Day, that means that something is owed to those people who lived here before colonization and their descendants.

In the Star Wars universe, imperial stormtroopers have notoriously bad aim, yet in Episode 4, Obiwan Kenobi explicitly states that they have great aim. I know there are a lot of good explanations out there regarding why this might be, but let me explain why it isn’t surprising at all based on the real life example of US police.

As any liberal will tell you, the police are highly trained in the use of their weapons, and they and only they are qualified to carry a gun around in public — just like imperial stormtroopers. That completely explains why they routinely empty two Glock magazines without stopping the suspect or accidentally fire their weapon (that’s sarcasm). The parallel with stormtroopers’ bad aim is hard to… miss (wink). Recently, two police officers got into a gunfight at a traffic stop with a crazed man wielding a machine gun; despite the fact that this man emptied his gun in 2 seconds without hitting anyone, he still managed to seriously injure one of the officers by beating him in the face with that weapon before the other officer was able to stop him.

The truth of the matter is that most police officers are not well-trained in terms of firearms. Ask any firearms trainer — virtually all of them being pro-cop conservatives — and they will tell you the same thing. The average police officer qualifies with their weapon once a year, and that’s it. Any training they’re receiving has to do with trying to get them to be less racist or — more often — inspiring them to develop a “warrior mindset” (which is more likely to get a normal citizen killed than to save them from a homicidal person).

The reason they’re not getting this training is because it is incredibly expensive and, though policing is dangerous, police would benefit more from safety training, especially in terms of driving and disease. In 2021 so far, COVID-19 has been the greatest cause of death among police because they are conservatives. Those are just the on-duty deaths; the biggest killer of police is suicide; so maybe some training or something regarding suicide would be a good idea.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum’s 2021 midyear report, 28 officers have been killed by gunfire so far this year — most of them while making an arrest. An additional 38 were killed in traffic accidents. Eighteen were killed in other ways, such as drowning while trying to save someone, or being beaten by prisoners. Covid-19 took 71 officers. So far this year, 89 law enforcement officers in the United States have died by suicide, according to Blue H.E.L.P., a nonprofit that keeps these statistics.

Death by suicide among police is a quiet epidemic. It needs to be acknowledged. by Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, August 9, 2021

There’s certainly a small subset of police who are very well-trained when it comes to firearms. Those would be your SWAT team or the few individual officers who thought it was important enough that they paid for this training themselves. That’s not to say that the average gun owner is just as safe with their guns; on the contrary, the average American gun owner has no training and only fired their gun on one occasion if at all before they stashed it a location that was easily accessible to both children and burglars. Still, the most important training both police and civilian firearm owners need is in de-escalation.

There are a million videos of police accidentally firing their weapons on YouTube. Keep in mind that what you find there is only what was caught on video. For example:

DEA Agents Shoots Himself with a Glock 40 (actually a Glock model 22 chambered in .40 S&W) A police officer accidentally shoots himself in the leg during an elementary school presentation.

Officer accidentally shoots himself (Las Vegas, 2019) A Las Vegas police officer accidentally shot himself in the lower body on Saturday night.

‘A wall in our apartment exploded:’ Holly Hill officer’s rifle accidentally discharges into neighboring home (Orlando, 2020) A bullet struck an apartment of a Holly Hill family getting ready for the day on Wednesday.

Darryl Jouett, Erlanger police officer, discharges handgun in elevator (Ohio, 2015) Darryl Jouett, a 25-year veteran of the Erlanger, Ohio Police Department, injured himself with a handgun after a dinner date.

To get back to the point, there’s absolutely nothing surprising about imperial stormtroopers in the Star Wars universe being both the best and worst shots in the galaxy. What they’re not telling you is that they also crash their TIE fighters all the time, refuse to use PPE during pandemics, complain about vaccine requirements, and shoot themselves and each other with frightening regularity. What is surprising is that what we pretend is a civilian police force bears a striking similarity to an authoritarian military force, and that this authoritarian military force has proven that it is no longer under the control of democratically elected government by (ironically) demonstrating that police cannot be required to get vaccinated for COVID-19 (unlike other government employees).

Democrats have failed to remove Trump’s USPS head (Louis DeJoy) from office and now he has announced both a slowdown of service and a rate hike. On its face, it seems like DeJoy is sabotaging the US postal system, but we also know that the politicians who control the Democratic Party do not have our interests at heart and are living in a weird fantasy land. A closer look is definitely warranted.

CNN quotes USPS spokesperson Kim Frum as saying:

These changes would position us to leverage more cost-effective means to transport First-Class packages via ground rather than using costly air transportation, which is also less reliable due to weather, flight traffic, availability constraints, competition for space, and the added hand-offs involved.

Well, that’s interesting. Are we saying that now — in a time where we know that climate change will destroy humanity if we can’t figure out how to spew less carbon into the atmosphere — the USPS was still using aircraft to move letters and parcels within the continental United States? Yes, that appears to be the case, and Democrats are calling this way of doing things “efficient” as in, “Why would you make the USPS less efficient by ending domestic transport of mail via air?”

The Democratic Party is the party of pure capitalism unadulterated by the complexity of traditional hierarchies. Capitalists and their lackeys have a really nonsensical definition of “efficient” that seems to have more to do with maximizing private profit than with actual efficiency. In this case, they might be defining “efficiency” solely in terms of speed of delivery, but that’s not efficiency, either. Real efficiency is a ratio of work accomplished to resources used (and waste produced). To be truly efficient, you might have to do things a little bit more slowly.

To be fair, it is almost certain that DeJoy is working to undermine the US Postal Service. He has a conflict of interest because he owns millions of dollars in shares of a USPS competitor. Moreover, conservatives hate any public service that is working well, and the USPS has been doing just that for ages despite being required to encumber the entirety of employee pensions in advance — something that no private company is required to do.

But let’s pause yet again — is it bad to require a company to maintain sufficient funding for the retirement of its current employees? The other option would be to roll the dice and just hope things work out. If we’re going to leave the majority of working people’s retirement income up to the company that they used to work for, isn’t it a better idea to force all corporations to encumber the totality of their employees’ retirement? In terms of what is sane, it’s either that or we could just have socialism — but I understand Americans don’t like that idea.

My conclusion is that unless DeJoy’s policies are slowing down mail delivery unnecessarily (i.e., outside what is required for actual efficiency), then there isn’t a problem. I understand that Democrats are claiming that this is going to affect elderly and rural customers, but frankly I will believe it when I see it. My only concern is whether this would affect mail-in ballots during an election, and the answer there isn’t to make the USPS less efficient by forcing it to move mail faster, but rather to change the law regarding how mail-in ballots work to allow for the increased delivery time.

This debate reminds me of the debates around the creation of this country, where you had people on one side trying to create a strong banking system that could dominate political and social life, while the other side was trying to make sure they could keep owning slaves. I’m exaggerating, but you get the point — the correct path forward is lost when the only people with power are two cabals of jerks.

Over the last year or so, the media has been publishing various stories about magic (psilocybin) mushrooms and their use in treating depression. In short, they are extremely effective, producing noticeable benefit after only one week and complete remission of depressive symptoms in a month. In comparison, normal antidepressants come nowhere close to this kind of effectiveness — and with no appreciable side effects. Of particular interest in the US, normal antidepressants like Prozac come with a risk that a person who is predisposed to violence will recover just enough to go on a murder spree; there’s no such problem with psilocybin.

Related: Magic Mushrooms May Be the Biggest Advance in Treating Depression Since Prozac by Adam Piore

Now that marijuana legalization has finally taken off — and without any of the apocalyptic fallout that conservatives have been crying about for well over a century — the push is on to legalize psilocybin. There’s no reason not to, and we are 100% behind legalizing it. There are other drugs that are currently illegal for recreation use that appear to be beneficial for those suffering from depression such as ketamine and MDMA, but those might require the assistance of a professional to be used safely. My prediction is that all of these drugs will become legal and regulated over the next decade.

This all brings up an interesting point, though. Where far right conservatives hate drugs because they hate fun and love suffering, liberals are fine with everyone being on drugs as long as the government is regulating it and capitalists are making money off of it. Basically, they want everyone (including themselves) passive and docile and there’s no “opiate of the masses” more effective than actual drugs. (Ironically, opiates themselves don’t work very well for that purpose because they are too addictive.)

But hey — maybe we shouldn’t all be on drugs all the time. What if we — and just hold on here because I’m going out on a ledge — what if we made a world that didn’t suck so people were just naturally not sad? See what I mean? Like, we have the power to make any kind of world we want, and if we just chose to make a good world, then people wouldn’t get sad as often.

I’m sure the Bidenists will say that’s just not practical, but they are full of shit.

Consider this article from ABC: Young people experiencing ‘widespread’ psychological distress over government handling of looming climate crisis, researchers say

Are anxiety and depression appropriate responses to the climate crisis and our political system’s complete failure to even start to rationally address this problem? Yes! Those are appropriate responses! Yet, if you go to your local medical professional with your depression or anxiety problem, they’re going to put you on drugs. There’s a small chance that they’ll get you into therapy. In either case, though, the solution to your appropriate mental distress is to change you — not to address the problem itself.

Brace yourself for some nuance: If you are suffering from depression or anxiety, definitely consider talking to a doctor or a therapist. There’s a very good chance that their help is what you need. I’m just saying that it isn’t everything that you need, or even the most important part of what you need. When our society forces you to adapt to how shitty it is without making any kind of correction in itself, it just means that someone else is going to have exactly the same problem. Indeed, more than 1 in 10 Americans is on antidepressants.

I don’t like blaming a “system” when there are specific people who have power in that system. So, more specifically, the number one cause of depression and anxiety is shitty people. It’s not just that shitty people exist, but that they are allowed to have authority over other people. It’s shitty people that create and maintain the shitty systems that harm other people — like the global capitalist system that is creating real, material harm including (but not limited to) climate change and the toxic authoritarian environment of the modern workplace. This certainly isn’t an easy problem to solve, but it is the problem and drug-induced complacency isn’t fixing anything.

On Monday, September 6 at around 11 in the morning, Daniel Arnold needed to poop and proceeded to a bathroom at the W Broadway Walmart in Columbia. At some point, the “long-barreled .410 pistol” he was concealing went off, damaging the floor of the bathroom and landing Mr. Arnold in jail for both his complete failure as a gun owner and his status as a felon in possession of a firearm. In the interest of keeping things positive, I guess we should congratulate Mr. Arnold on managing to somehow conceal an enormous, 4.2 lb. handgun long enough to make it into the Walmart bathroom. We are certainly glad that no one — including Mr. Arnold — was injured.

Columbia man charged after allegedly firing gun in Walmart

The serious thing about all this is that public bathrooms are one of the most common places for negligent discharges to occur. In addition to bathroom activity often resulting in a negligent discharge, it also commonly results in a firearm abandoned in the bathroom. For those of us who carry a concealed weapon, figuring out what to do about the bathroom and practicing managing your gun in the bathroom are both extremely important.

I’m not going to give you any specific strategy, but I will give you some recommendations:

First off, obviously, use a holster. If you aren’t using a holster, please, please for the love of all that is decent and good, get a holster that works for you and your weapon. Make sure that the holster you choose does a good job of retaining that weapon. It might end up upside-down in the bathroom and you need the gun to stay in there if that happens. If you’re choosing between a holstering option that can stay in place when you use the bathroom and one that cannot, and there’s no strong reason to pick either one, go with the one that makes it safer to use the bathroom. Finding a holster that works is actually pretty hard, so don’t delay — make this your top priority.

Second: If your rig requires that you remove the gun from your person to sit on a toilet, don’t remove the gun from the holster; instead, remove the entire rig from your person. We don’t want that trigger to ever be exposed unless it is appropriate to pull it.

Third: If you are going to remove the entire rig, make sure you can’t accidentally leave it in the bathroom. Maybe put it in your pants, right in front of you, where you can see it and can’t really leave without noticing it.

Fourth: Let’s make sure people don’t see your gun. Most people are going to be alarmed if they see it, and some people are going to decide to try to steal it from you. So, however you decide to deal with your gun in the bathroom, please make an effort to make sure it stays concealed despite the weird way public restroom dividers are made in the US.

Last: Practice using the toilet with your gun in the safety and privacy of your own home (if you have one). Just like every other aspect of living with a firearm, practice is what creates safe and effective habits, and that practice needs to be done in the safest place possible for you and everyone else in your community.

Here is a related video: